Beliefs in Pain and Suffering:
A Cognitive Neuroscience Approach
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2024.003Schlagworte
believing, empathy, love, pain, peace, suffering, trustAbstract
In this communication recent evidence from cognitive neuroscience is presented showing that believing is a fundamental brain function. It integrates the perception of information from the environment with personal perspective taking (“what does it mean to me?”) as the basis for predictive coding of action. Observing that another person becomes injured can make one believe that the pain in the injured person is similar to pain that oneself has experienced previously. This first-person perspective has been called empathy and includes primal beliefs about potentially pain eliciting objects and painful events in the sense of “what does it mean to you?”. Furthermore, observing other people to suffer involves the conceptual belief that their condition is aversive and burdensome. Believing in love and peace involves the perspective of “what does it mean to us?”. Contradictory events may cause the sensation of pain and suffering in the afflicted individuals resulting in mutual distrust and eventually disruption of social bonds. In conclusion, beliefs play an important, though long underestimated role in cognitive neuroscience of pain and suffering and more generally for the cultural notions of deities and evil.
Literaturhinweise
Angel, Hans-Ferdinand. 2013. “Credition.” In Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religion, edited by Anne Runehov and Lluis Oviedo. Vol. 1, 536–39. Dordrecht: Springer.
Angel, Hans-Ferdinand. 2020. “A History of the evolution of religion: from religion to religiosity to the processes of believing.” In The evolution of religion: how biology, psychology, and theology interact, edited by Jay R. Feierman, and Lluis Oviedo, 87–103. New York: Routledge/Taylor & Francis.
Angel, Hans-Ferdinand. 2024. “Fluid theodicy – God in the pattern of empathy, emotion, and conceptual believing.” Scientia and Fides 12, no 1: 11–50. http://dx.doi.org/10.12775/SetF.2024.002.
Andersen, Susan M., and Elizabeth Przybylinski. 2018. „Shared reality in interpersonal relationships.” Current Opinion in Psychol 23: 42–46. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2017.11.007.
Bekkali, Soukayna, George J. Youssef, Peter H. Donaldson, Natalia Albein-Urios, Christian Hyde, and Peter G. Enticott. 2021. “Is the putative mirror neuron system associated with empathy? A systematic review and meta-analysis.” Neuropsychological Reviews 31: 14–57. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11065-020-09452-6.
Bird, Geoffry, and Essi Viding. 2014. “The self to other model of empathy: providing a new framework for understanding empathy impairments in psychopathy, autism, and alexithymia.” Neuroscience Biobehavioural Reviews 47: 520–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.09.021.
Brashier, Nadia M. and Elizabeth J. Marsh. 2020. “Judging Truth.” Annual Reviews in Psychology 71: 499–515. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010419-050807.
Conty, Laurence, Guillame Dezecache, Laurant Hugueville, and Julie Grèze. 2012.
“Early binding of gaze, gesture, and emotion: neural time course and cor relates.” Journal of Neuroscience 32: 4531–39. https://doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.5636-11.2012.
Cyrulnik, Boris. 2005. “Ethology and the biological correlates of mood.” Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience 7: 217–21. https://doi: 10.31887/DCNS.2005.7.3/bcyrulnik.
Dalege, Jonas, and Tamara van der Does. 2022. “Using a cognitive network model of moral and social beliefs to explain belief change.” Sci Adv 8: eabm0137. https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abm0137.
Daviu, Nuria, Michael R. Bruachas, Bita Moghaddam, Carmen Sandi, and Anna Beyeler. 2019. “Neurobiological links between stress and anxiety.” Neurobiology of Stress 11: 100191. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2019.100191.
Decety, Jean, Inbal Ben-Ami, Florina Uzefovsky, and Ariel Knafo-Noam. 2015. “Empathy as a driver of prosocial behaviour: highly conserved neurobehavioural mechanisms across species.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 371: 20150077. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsth.2015.0077.
Ernandes, Michele. 2018. Theism as a product of the human triune brain. Rome: Aracne editrice. Fiske, Susan T., Amy J. Cuddy, and Peter Glick. 2007. “Universal dimensions of social cognition: warmth and competence.” Trends in Cognitive Science 11: 77–83. https://doi: 10.1016/j.tics.2006.11.005.
Flor, Herta, Lone Nikolajsen, and Troels Staehelin Jensen. 2006. “Phantom limb pain a case of maladaptive CNS plasticity?” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 7: 873–81. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn1991.
Friston, Karl J., Thomas Parr, and Bert de Vries. 2017. “The graphical braIn belief propagation and active inference.” Network Neuroscience 1: 381–414. https://doi.org/10.1162/netn_a_00018.
Frith, Uta, Frith, Christopher D. 2003. “Development and neurophysiology of mentalizing.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society London B: Biological Sciences 358: 459–73. https://doi: 10.1098/rstb.2002.1218.
Fritsch, Merva, Veith Weilnhammer, Paul Thiele, Andreas Heinz, and Philipp Sterzer. 2023. “Sensory and environmental uncertainty in perceptual decision-making.” iScience 26: 106412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2023.106412.
Gallagher, Helen L., Francesca Happé, Nicola Brunswick, Paul C. Fletcher, Uta Frith, and Christopher D. Frith. 2000. “Reading the mind in cartoons and stories: an fMRI study of ‘theory of mind’ in verbal and nonverbal tasks.” Neuropsychologia 38: 11–21. https://doi: 10.1016/s0028-3932(99)00053-6.
Gendron, Maria, Debi Roberson, Jacoba Marietta van der Vyver, and Lisa Feldman Barrett. 2014. “Perceptions of emotion from facial expressions are not cultur ally universal: evidence from a remote culture.” Emotion 14: 251–62. https://doi: 10.1037/a0036052.
Griffiths, Edmund. 2014. Towards a science of belief systems. London: Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137346377.
Jackson, Philip L., Andrew N. Meltzoff, and Jean Decety. 2006. “Neural circuits involved in imitation and perspective-taking.” NeuroImage 31: 429–39. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2005.11.026.
Jeannerod, Marc. 1995. “Mental imagery in the motor context.” Neuropsychologia 33: 1419–432. https://doi.org/10.1016/0028-3932(95)00073-c.
Kable, Joseph W., and Paul W. Glimcher. 2007. “The neural correlates of subjective value during intertemporal choice.” Nature Neuroscience 10: 1625–633. https://doi.org/10.1038/nn2007.
Lindenberg, Robert, Maria Uhlig, Dag Scherfeld, Gottfried Schlaug, and Rüdiger J. Seitz. 2012. “Communication with emblematic gestures: Shared and distinct neural correlates of expression and reception.” Human Brain Mapping 33: 812–23. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.21258.
Meltzoff, Andrew N. and Jean Decety. 2003. “What imitation tells us about social cognition: a rapprochement between developmental psychology and cognitive neuroscience.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, London B 358: 491–500. https://doi:10.1098/rstb.2002.1261.
Miyazono, Kengo, and Kiichi Inarimori. 2021. “Empathy, altruism, and group identification.” Frontiers of Psychology 12: 749315. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.749315.
Oeberst, Aileen, and Roland Imhoff. 2023. “Toward parsimony in bias research: a proposed common framework of belief-consistent information processing for a set of biases.” Perspectives in Psychological Science 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1177/17456916221148147.
Oviedo, Lluis, Konrad Szocik. 2020. “Religious and other beliefs: how much specificity?” Sage Open 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1177/2158244019898849.
Oviedo, Luis. 2022. “How to scientifically study beliefs and believing and why it matters to theology.” Reviews in Science, Religion and Theology 1: 5–18.
Paloutzian, Raymond F., Zeynep Sagir, and LeRon F. Shults. 2021. “Modelling reconciliation and peace processes.” In Multi-level Reconciliation and Peacebuilding, edited by Kevin P. Clemens, and SungYong Lee, 225–42. New York: Routledge, NY.
Preston, Stephanie D., and Frans B de Waal. 2002. “Empathy: Its ultimate and proximate bases.” Behavioural Brain Science 25: 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0140525x02000018.
Plante, Tom G., Gary E. Schwartz, Julie J. Exline, Crystal Park, Raymond F. Paloutzian, Rüdiger J. Seitz, and Hans-Ferdinand Angel. 2023. “Human interaction with the divine, the sacred, and the deceased: topics that warrant increased attention by psychologists.” Current Psychology 42: 31961–75. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12144-022-04226-0.
Potthoff, Denise, and Rüdiger J. Seitz. 2015. “Role of the first and second person perspective for control of behaviour: understanding other people’s facial expressions.” Journal of Physiology (Paris) 109: 191–200. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jphysparis.2015.12.003.
Ptasczynski, Lena Esther, Isa Steinecker, Philipp Sterzer, and Matthias Guggenmoss. 2022. “The value of confidence: confidence prediction errors drive value-based learning in the absence of external feedback.” PLOS Computed Biology 18: e1010580. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1010580.
Ruan, Jianghai, Sebastian Bludau, Nicola Palomero-Gallagher, Svenja Caspers, Hartmut Mohlberg, Simon B. Eickhoff, Rüdiger J. Seitz, and Katrin Amunts. 2018. “Cytoarchitecture, Probability Maps, and Functions of the Human Supplementary and Pre-Supplementary Motor Areas.” Brain Structure and Function 223: 4169–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00429-018.1738-6.
Ruby, Perrine, and Jean Decety. 2001. “Effect of subjective perspective taking during simulation of action: a PET investigation of agency.” Nature Neuroscience 4: 546–50. https://doi.org/10.1038/87510.
Sartory, Gudrun, Jan Cwik, Helge Knuppertz, Benjamin Schürholt, Morena Lebens, Rüdiger J. Seitz, and Ralf Schulze..2013. “In search of the trauma memory: A meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of symptom provocation in Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).” PLOS One 8: e58150. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0058150.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., Dag Scherfeld, S Friederichs, K Popp, Hans-J. Wittsack, Nina P. Azari, and Matthias Franz. 2008. “Valuating other people’s emotional face expression: A combined fMRI and EEG study.” Neuroscience 152: 713–22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2007.10.066.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., Raymond F. Paloutzian, and Hans-Ferdinand Angel. 2017. „Processes of believing. Where do they come from? What are they good for?” F1000Research 5: 2573. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.9773.2.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., Raymond F. Paloutzian, and Hans-Ferdinand Angel. 2018. „From believing to belief: a general biomathematical model.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 30: 1254–64. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_01292.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., and Hans-Ferdinand Angel. 2020. “Belief formation – a driving force for brain evolution.” Brain and Cognition 140: 105548, 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bandc.2020.105548.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., Hans-Ferdinand Angel, Raymond F. Paloutzian, and Ann Taves. 2022. „Believing and social interactions: effects on bodily expressions and personal narratives.” Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience 16: 894219. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.894219.
Seitz, Rüdiger J. 2023. “Psychological concepts and active inference.” Qeios CC-BY 4.0. https://doi.org/10.32388/G4R3AC.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., Hans-Ferdinand Angel, Raymond F. Paloutzian, and Ann Taves. 2023a. „Credition – an interdisciplinary approach to the nature of beliefs and believing.” Frontiers in Behavioural Neuroscience 17. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2023.1217648.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., Hans-Ferdinand Angel, and Raymond F. Paloutzian. 2023b. „Bridging the gap between believing and memory functions.” Europe’s Journal of Psychology 19: 113–24. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.746/1.
Seitz, Rüdiger J., and Raymond F. Paloutzian. 2023. „Beliefs made it into science – believe it or not.” Function 4: zqad049. https://doi.org/10.1093/function/zqad049.
Shamay-Tsoory, Simone, Judith Aharon-Peretz, and Daniella Perry. 2009. “Two systems for empathy: a double dissociation between emotional and cognitive empathy in inferior frontal gyrus versus ventromedial prefrontal lesions.” Brain 132: 617–27. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awn279.
Singer, Tanja, Ben Seymour, John O’Doherty, Holger Kaube, Raymond J. Dolan, and Christopher D. Frith. 2004. “Empathy for pain evolves the affective but not sensory components of pain.” Science 303: 1157–62. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1093535.
Steiner, Nils D., Christian H. Schimpf, and Alexander Wuttke. 2023. “Left behind and united by populism? Populism’s multiple roots in feelings of lacking societal recognition.” Politische Vierteljahresschriften 64: 107–32. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11615-022-00416-4.
Tiemann, Laura, Vanessa D. Hohn, Son Ta Dinh, Elisabeth S. May, Moritz M. Nickel, Joachim Gross and Markus Ploner. 2018. „Distinct patterns of brain activity mediate perceptual and motor and autonomic responses to noxious stimuli.” Nature Communications 9: 4487. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-018-06875-x.
Toga, Arthur W., and John C. Mazziotta. 2000. Brain mapping. The systems. San Diego: Academic Press.
Weilnhammer, Veith, Merve Fritsch, Meera Chikermane, Anna-Lena Eckert, Katharina Kanthak, Heiner Stuke, Jakob Kaminski, and Philipp Sterzer. 2021. „An active role of inferior frontal cortex in conscious experience.” Current Biology 31: 2868–80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.04.043.
Wiech, Katja, Markus Ploner, and Irene Tracey. 2008. “Neurocognitive aspects of pain perception.” Trends in Cognitive Science 12: 306–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2008.05.005.
Wu, Taoyu, and Shihui Han. 2021. “Neural mechanisms of modulations of empathy and altruism by beliefs of others’ pain.” eLife 10: e66043. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.66043.
Zacks, Jeffrey M., and Barbara Tversky. 2001. “Event structure in perception and cognition.” Psychological Bulletin 127: 3–21. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.127.1.3.
Downloads
Veröffentlicht
Zitationsvorschlag
Ausgabe
Rubrik
Lizenz
Copyright (c) 2024 Rüdiger Seitz
Dieses Werk steht unter der Lizenz Creative Commons Namensnennung - Keine Bearbeitungen 4.0 International.
CC BY ND 4.0. The Creator/Contributor is the Licensor, who grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to use the Work on the fields indicated in the License Agreement.
- The Licensor grants the Licensee a non-exclusive license to use the Work/related rights item specified in § 1 within the following fields: a) recording of Work/related rights item; b) reproduction (multiplication) of Work/related rights item in print and digital technology (e-book, audiobook); c) placing the copies of the multiplied Work/related rights item on the market; d) entering the Work/related rights item to computer memory; e) distribution of the work in electronic version in the open access form on the basis of Creative Commons license (CC BY-ND 3.0) via the digital platform of the Nicolaus Copernicus University Press and file repository of the Nicolaus Copernicus University.
- Usage of the recorded Work by the Licensee within the above fields is not restricted by time, numbers or territory.
- The Licensor grants the license for the Work/related rights item to the Licensee free of charge and for an unspecified period of time.
FULL TEXT License Agreement
Stats
Number of views and downloads: 425
Number of citations: 0
